The management of OR groups: results of a survey

This paper presents the results of a survey of OR group managers to examine the success and survival of OR groups in UK industry, commerce and the pub lic sector, which was sponsored by the OR Society. The aims of the survey w ere threefold: to gain some understanding of the demographics of UK OR grou ps in the mid-1990s as compared to the evidence collected 10 years earlier by the Commission; secondly, to establish how OR groups work, the type of p rojects they carry out, the clients they work for and the organisations the y work in; and finally, to gain an understanding of how OR groups are manag ed, including the factors that OR managers believed to be important in ensu ring their group's continuing success. In a nutshell, this paper presents a snap shot of OR group management in the mid-1990s.